Richard Treks: BALM: Week 2 Day 4

After riding yesterday in a cold rain, and camping last night in a cold, windy rain, I was glad to wake up this morning to sunshine. But it was still cold, and even windier than the night before, so windy that Gary and I considered laying over in the campsite for the day. But we decided to see how the ride would go.

It didn't go well. The wind was blowing steady at 25-30 miles an hour, with stronger gusts, so strong that at times we couldn't control our bikes. The headwind would get tangled up in our wheels and push us off the shoulder. It was scary at times, especially on a busy highway with a narrow shoulder. After 15 miles we said enough and set up camp in this lovely campsite.

Sometimes the ride is neither good nor bad, but it's good and bad. The wind today was certainly bad. It was the worse wind I've ever been in. In comparison, the wind in my face across Kansas was a gentle breeze. This wind today was hurricane! Nothing except fatigue or an unexpected beautiful place has ever forced me to stop a ride early.

This campsite is an unexpected beautiful place. Gary and I had I initially planned to ride as far as Rapid River, where we would turn from a northern to an eastern direction, and hopefully out of the wind. There is no way in the Upper Peninsula that we could have made it that far. We'd be wrecks on the side of the road. So this park, OJ Fuller County Park, south of Escanaba, far from Rapid River, is unexpected. And beautiful.

The park is one of those good happenings that results from something bad. It's going to be cold tonight, 32° or lower, but the wind has died, and tomorrow, once the day heats up some, the wind will be gentle, perhaps to our back, and Gary and I will have a fine ride to Rapid River, where we'll be traveling east across the Upper Peninsula toward our turn south to the eastern shore of Lake Michigan.